Dear BMorgI went to burning man last year for the first time. It was wonderful. I wanted to go back this year- to participate more. I wanted to try my hand at art, to contribute. I was so excited.I tried to get tickets through the lottery, but no such luck. I had only my one measly entry as I have one card.I am actually broke, and submitted documentation proving it in the low income application, but I was denied there too. Being that I am truly hard up and cannot afford a scalped ticket, burning man has become prohibitively expensive for me. You claim radical inclusivity, but I am excluded.You claim decommodification, but your tickets are commodities.Why can't you expand burning man? Change it's location? Try to move with the paradigm shift instead of clinging to the nostalgia of keeping burning man on playa? Didn't burning man begin on a beach in San Francisco? Are we not a dynamic movement that in a way embodies change? I won't be coming to burning man this year- I have been excluded because of my lack of numerous credit cards on which to enter your lottery multiple times, my lack of personal connections with other burners who will hook their friends up, and for apparently not being 'poor enough' despite ekeing out living expenses (barely) every month to be worthy of a low income ticket. Too poor to buy a ticket, but not poor enough to be pitied. I realize that this is a rant. I realize I am whining. I guess i just am bummed to not be able to come to a place I was told was a home for me.If you cannot grow with your constituents,If you cannot shift with the paradigm as it movesBurning man may still happen on playaBut its ideals will be lost.

Eh fuck!! (was hoping to get back to the dust city diner for the best goddamn breakfast I ever had)

Why can't you expand burning man? BLM permits control the amount of tickets. Last year was a hard cap of 50,000, which the org has gotten in trouble for stepping over.Change it's location? The Playa is one of the largest flat expanses of land of that type in the country. Do you have some suggestions? Anywhere you move it to you're still going to have BLM/DNR to deal with. Or private owners. You'll also have local law enforcement agencies to deal with, and you'll need to start with them from scratch, instead of the decades of coordination that's in place. So how many people are you going to tell them to expect? 60,000? 100,000? Keep in mind the more people you add the harder permitting and LEO cooperation is going to become. What happens when you hit 100,000 tickets? Do you say "hey! Things have changed on our end...we're just gonna print off 10,000 more!" The BLM isn't just going to say "Sure buddy! Whatevs! We're cool."Try to move with the paradigm shift instead of clinging to the nostalgia of keeping burning man on playa? huh?Didn't burning man begin on a beach in San Francisco? Yes.Are we not a dynamic movement that in a way embodies change?Yes... no... wait. The wording is tricky. Are we not... Yes...we are not a movement that embodies change ... No we are not a movement that embodies change...ERROR ERROR ERROR

I may have a ticket in my pocket for this year, but I have already realized that I will not be going back every year, or potentially even every other year. It is also a royal pain trying to build or make stuff for an event 2000 miles away - not to mention an environmental disaster.

I have been thinking about a concept: "Playa dust is a luxury."

The playa is pretty amazing. Even on the mild years, the desert really messes with your head - gets you out of your normal line of thinking. Although it may not be going to Everest, it is enough of a challenge to get people working together. It is a perfectly empty blank canvas on which just about anything looks surreal and otherworldly.

My question since going is, "Do I need to go 2000 miles to do this?" Can we make, build, share, and party out in a field somewhere? It may not be the playa, but the cultural template is there. In other words, are the regionals the real thing - or can they be the real thing if I put in the effort and really want them to be?

So my friend and I are building a theme camp for a regional in driving distance, and it is a blast planning. All the costs are an order of magnitude less. No baggage fees, plane tickets, car rentals, hotel, etc... we have a pickup truck and we plan on filling it.

We will see what happens in October.

At some level, this has to work in places other than the Black Rock Desert. Otherwise Burning Man is just a bunch of bullshit.

It is real easy for me to say, holding a 2012 ticket, but hell, go to a regional - it will cost you about $50 or so. Make some crazy shit and bring it with you. See if you can find your way home.

An old topic, but the playa is a MAJOR factor in the event. Totally flat, very large, a literal blank slate, inhospitable, induces disorientation even without all the BM craziness. For me, it couldn't happen anywhere else. Or rather, it would be completely different, which is probably a good thing, but I highly doubt another venue would produce the total mindfuck.

Doesn't matter anyway, I'm pretty certain the BLM will cite BM once again this year for overpopulation, which I believe will put any future BM events at Black Rock in serious jeopardy. Perhaps the permit will get increased to 58K in June. That's the only saving grace.

5280MeV wrote:My question since going is, "Do I need to go 2000 miles to do this?" Can we make, build, share, and party out in a field somewhere? It may not be the playa, but the cultural template is there. In other words, are the regionals the real thing - or can they be the real thing if I put in the effort and really want them to be?

KUDOS! If you can't party where you are, then you have no business going to the playa.

Of course, if the event moved to some different location that had better road access and could accommodate more people, the same people would be posting useless internet rants about how the event has changed and sold out everything that made it special all in the name of selling a few more tickets.

The real shame isn't that you didn't get tickets, it's that despite going and having a great time there doesn't appear to have been anything beyond that. Last post in July of last year, and your rant didn't indicate that you'd made any kind of magical connection with a local/regional community. It's something you might want to consider looking into, regional groups and events/projects with like-minded people throughout the year are good (and cheap) ways to connect with the magic of the playa when you're not able to get out there. People miss out on going to Burning Man - even people who really really wanted to go (I've missed a few years myself). Use the time to either think up crazier stuff for your next trip, or for ways you can 'take it off the playa' and make daily life more awesome.

+1 to Frogbird's post. Even if you lived in Reno, I think there's value in taking the occasional break and doing something else. Otherwise you sort of turn into a dustier version of the people who take the same vacations to Disneyworld every year. In my 'gap years' we either laid low (too broke to do anything fancy), or went adventuring elsewhere. My gf and I have talked about the idea of taking a year away and touring some regionals instead - doing both would be great, but is outside our budget.

5280MeV wrote:My question since going is, "Do I need to go 2000 miles to do this?" Can we make, build, share, and party out in a field somewhere? It may not be the playa, but the cultural template is there. In other words, are the regionals the real thing - or can they be the real thing if I put in the effort and really want them to be?

To me, a barren land of playa plays a big role is providing a certain sense of isolation from the default world. Driving through miles and miles of nothing except mountians, hills, open wide land, and being far away from civilization.If that sense is lost, you kind of lose the essense that people knowingly or unknowingly seek.

trilobyte wrote:The real shame isn't that you didn't get tickets, it's that despite going and having a great time there doesn't appear to have been anything beyond that. Last post in July of last year, and your rant didn't indicate that you'd made any kind of magical connection with a local/regional community. It's something you might want to consider looking into, regional groups and events/projects with like-minded people throughout the year are good (and cheap) ways to connect with the magic of the playa when you're not able to get out there. People miss out on going to Burning Man - even people who really really wanted to go (I've missed a few years myself). Use the time to either think up crazier stuff for your next trip, or for ways you can 'take it off the playa' and make daily life more awesome.

Not everyone has a 'local/regional community'.

I tried for years to go to regionals that were always sold out and an expensive distance away.Wasted time.

There are more options now, but still not the same.The burny stuff I do locally doesn't involve any burners.

Getting a ticket last year was good luck, but like many who got tickets this year in the lottery got lucky too. I feel bad for the people who for TWO years in a row got left out due to the tickets running out. Ouch.

My plan if I can't make it this year is to travel out to one of the bigger burner events... I hear Utah makes a great one. You can find the community if you seek it out... sure it's not the exact same as BRC, but you can get pretty close to the same creative vibe.

Part of me really hopes for some nasty weather like 2007 or playa conditions like 2008 - I agree that the nice weather has led to some of the influx. What scares me is the potential for mayhem out there if it does! Last year I was was stunned by the number of shade structures hardly even tethered down!

Having seen first hand a 40ft x 40ft metal shade structure start to take flight my first year going (no, it wasn't mine) and helping them recover with extra rebar and ropes I brought instilled a massive amount of fear and respect of what the playa can throw at you. I am also sure that what I saw in 2007 pales in comparison to other years.

Personally I love the extreme weather - putting my planning skills against the elements is exhilerating (especially if you win). But when I have to worry about aluminum shrapnel coming at me in the wind I get very scared!

Is there a 'hoping for nasty weather to scare away tourists' thread? There should be.

I've said it several times myself.

I remember in 2008, by the time the group I was traveling with arrived Monday afternoon, one of the two people we met there left. She couldn't handle the intense weather.

I'm really glad my first two years were 2007 & 2008. The weather each year since has gotten easier and easier. In 2009 I mistakenly brought 2 virgins, and they were freaking out about the weather midweek, and I just couldn't fathom it personally. I understand from their perspective the weather was nuts, but really, after earlier years with 4 hour long total white-outs, the weather since has been a breeze.

I even remember last year overhearing a virgin say "this is awesome, but not something you need to do every year". Just hearing that gave me comfort in knowing some balance in the community is likely to be retained, since the tourists just come and go.

I'd like to see some hellish weather, especially around Thursday and Friday. During the day it could even be condition alpha type stuff. It isn't especially for the fair-weather tourists (that is a reason), but I want to experience it. At the very least I missed seeing the apocalyptic clouds during the major burns last year.

"The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law." -- Christopher Hitchens